Week 5 Sanga
Sanga 5: Exploring Humility
In Krishna, we come up against someone who is in every respect superior to ourselves. Unless we know Krishna like that, and know ourselves as tiny in comparison, we will never know Krishna at all. As long as we are proud we will not know Krishna. Why? Why does Krishna ask for humility?
Content:
- Read this article
Objective:
Discuss the importance of humility and how can we practically implement humility in our lives.
Discussion:
A proud person is always looking down on things and people, and as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something above or greater than yourself.
How do we feel about the ‘pride’ we feel when we do something good for someone and they thank us or notice us? Pleasure in being praised is not pride. The child who is patted on the back for doing a lesson well is pleased and he ought to be. For here, the pleasure lies not in what you are but in the fact that you have pleased someone whom you wanted to please.
Pride here is switching from thinking ‘I have pleased this person; all is well’ to ‘What a fine person I must be to have done it’.
A man is sometimes ‘proud’ of his son, or his father, school, country and is this kind of pride dangerous to us?
Often the word ‘proud of’ in a sentence is referring to having a warm feeling towards or admiration of. Such admiration of course is not a bad thing. The fault would be in thinking ourselves better than others for being a part of this situation or position, though this pride, even though detrimental, is still better than one simply being proud of himself/herself.
Do we think Krishna warns or forbids pride because it is an offense? Why does Krishna ask for humility?